Wednesday, July 17, 2013

Make Marketing Obvious.

B&Q's unloved room is a great example of a genuine insight. Something that resonates with all of us, something that was unseen in plain sight and something that B&Q can directly address. My one concern would be whether or not B&Q has tied the insight exclusively to them as opposed to just encouraging people to renovate their unloved room.

The absence of in-store design consultations and personalised product packages seems like a missed trick to me, but maybe such integrated marketing is in the pipeline. Given how keen marketing people are on "ownership", it's surprisng how often they fail to follow through on the idea.

The campaign also got me thinking about another unloved room - the garage. Specifically, the tendency of people to use theirs as store-rooms for unloved stuff at the expense of leaving their expensive automotive asset parked on the driveway or in the street.

This sort of actual behaviour is exactly what companies and agencies should be looking out for and acting upon. A joint-promotion between storage businesses and insurance companies would be an obvious option and one that would benefit both industries and simultaneously position them as problem-solvers in the minds of customers.

Reminding people that there are cheaper places to store their stuff and that garages are designed to protect cars from weather, damage and theft is marketing communication made easy because you're preaching to the lapsed believer rather than trying to convert the indifferent.

There will be many such examples out there, but I'm not sure enough of us are looking for them.